I mean, just look at it. Pure, clean snow. Covering everything. For at least a short time, hiding all our sins and failings. Not just visually. Walking in fresh-fallen and still falling snow is quiet. The only sounds are the susurration of the wind and the slight squeak or crunch of my boots on […]
January 7 is, I learned when growing up in Winnipeg, “Ukrainian Christmas.” As a boy, I just accepted that Ukrainian people celebrated Christmas on a different day than my family did. At one point, I was taught that Ukrainian people observe Christmas Eve as the day the Three Magi arrived in Bethlehem to worship the […]
It’s something you just cannot avoid or escape. It’s everywhere, and no matter how much you struggle against it, eventually you have to give in. Here it is, New Year’s Day, 2023. So I have to tell you my resolutions. Or plans. So here we go. The podcast As you know, I launched Beyond Barbarossa, […]
Author, IT specialist and peripatetic This is a very special post: a conversation with Ivan Baidak, author of Invisible and five other books. Invisible has recently been published in English by Canadian publisher Guernica Editions of Hamilton, Ontario. I met Ivan five years ago on a trip to California for a writer’s conference in Russian […]
As winter teases us here in Ottawa, snowing and freezing and then treating us to warm sunshine, followed by freezing rain, I think of the looming winter in Ukraine. People there facing sub-zero temperatures without electricity, gas, or even running water. Yet the Ukrainian people continue to defy the Russian invasion. They’re committed to resisting, […]
COVID. War. Totalitarianism. Pandemic. Climate change. Terrorism. Nuclear war. Judging from hyperbole in social media, we are out-and-out terrified of these things. Just consider the rhetoric around the use of “tactical” nuclear weapons in Ukraine. Will he? Won’t he? Should we? The job of writers of fantasy and speculative fiction is to reflect our audience’s fears back […]
I wrote that I will never again say “things can’t get worse.” Because they did, and continue to. COVID-19 cases are increasing again in China, Japan, the U.K. and elsewhere. And the Russian war of aggression in Ukraine grinds on. I find this particularly affecting, as I am married to a Ukrainian-Canadian, and I wrote […]
Protesters against vaccines in Ottawa are walking on Parliament Hill, screaming “freedom” in a pathetic imitation of Mel Gibson’s overdone portrayal of William Wallace. What does “freedom” mean? It means responsibility. You can do the things you want to do, go where you want, say what you want. It also means you have to take […]
My father, David Thomas Reid, died on January 19, 2022, at age 87 of COVID-19. This is a story of his passing. It’s not the only story. It’s told from the perspective two thousand kilometres away, by his son. The story as told by David Reid’s friends much closer to him will be different. But […]
It’s hard to sum up my feelings about this new year. Normally, I feel energized by the start of a new calendar, and a little daunted by all the ideas for new projects, or finishing older ones. It’s silly on one level. Any day can be the start of a new year. I feel similarly […]